MILLINOCKET, Maine — A state agency has completed the next large step in the review of a New Hampshire company’s proposal to build what state officials called the world’s first facility that would use microwaves and thermal energy to produce torrefied wood.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection formally accepted on June 4 the application from Thermogen Industries LLC to build its plant in the wood yard of the Katahdin Avenue paper mill, DEP spokeswoman Samantha Depoy-Warren said Friday.
A subsidiary of Cate Street Capital of New Hampshire, Thermogen seeks air and water permits for the project. The air permit review will begin next week, Depoy-Warren said.
According to the application, the torrefied wood chips will be transformed from wood wastes into “stable and water-resistant” pellets containing 30 percent more energy than standard wood pellets. The facility will be a major source of volatile organic compounds, producing an estimated 50 tons annually of VOCs, which according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency can cause a host of health problems.
“While this project is the first of its kind in the world, the application review process it is subject to (a Major Source License) is a familiar one to the department, as there are well over 100 licensed major sources (of VOCs) here in the state,” Depoy-Warren said in a statement.
Facilities on a list of similar major-source pollutants include the East Millinocket and Millinocket paper mills, Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC and the Indeck biomass boiler in Enfield. All of them have scrubbers or other devices that contain or eliminate pollutant emissions or keep them within acceptable standards.
The EPA defines VOCs as toxins typically emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids that could have many short- and long-term adverse health effects, including eye, nose and throat irritation; headaches, loss of coordination and nausea; and damage to liver, kidney and central nervous system.
Cate Street Capital officials have said that the $35 million facility will use a Targeted Intelligent Energy System built by Scotland-based Rotawave Biocoal to manufacture biocoal, or torrefied wood.
The machine would be at least as quiet and odor-free as the paper mill it would go next to, they said at a meeting in Millinocket early last month.
The plant would hire 25 full-time workers and begin producing, from about 240,000-250,000 tons of wood wastes, about 110,000 tons of torrefied wood pellets annually for sale to British and European coal-fired electricity plants. Cate Street expects the facility to start in summer 2013.
Tightened air-quality regulations in the United Kingdom and in Europe and a recognition by leaders there of the global warming hazard have created a need for torrefied wood that company officials are eager to fill, they have said.
Four wood trucks per hour would visit the site in daytime and town and state officials expect that the facility would create four to seven jobs indirectly for each of the 25 workers directly employed, a common ratio for manufacturing facilities.
Department of Environmental Protection officials hope to finish their project review and decide whether to permit the project by fall, Depoy-Warren said.
Depoy-Warren credited Cate Street officials’ several preliminary meetings with DEP as helping the project move forward quickly.
She wasn’t sure on Friday whether DEP officials would be required or opt to hold public meetings on the project, but said that project abutters could request public meetings within 20 days of June 4. It was unclear whether those were business or calendar days.
Such requests must indicate the interest of the person filing and specify why a public hearing is warranted. The department’s commissioner can opt for hearings on any application and the department will hold public hearings if it determines there is credible conflicting technical information regarding a licensing criterion and it is likely that a public hearing will assist the decision maker in understanding the evidence, Depoy-Warren said.
Follow BDN writer Nick Sambides Jr. on Twitter at @NickSam2BDN.
It seems like a harzardous operation for a place that close to homes and businesses.
VOC’s: effect on human health.
Eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches, loss of coordination, nausea; damage to liver, kidney, and central nervous system. Some organics can cause cancer in animals; some are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans. Key signs or symptoms associated with exposure to VOCs include conjunctival irritation, nose and throat discomfort, headache, allergic skin reaction, dyspnea, declines in serum cholinesterase levels, nausea, emesis, epistaxis, fatigue, dizziness.
LePage and friends sell out Millinocket.
So you would be in favor of banning all wood burning in the state?
It also states “Tightened air-quality regulations in the United Kingdom and in Europe and a recognition by leaders there of the global warming hazard have created a need for torrefied wood that company officials are eager to fill, they have said”.
They are happy to use torrified wood in the UK but they don’t want to manufacture it there. They would rather stick it to the people in the Maine Woods who are desperate for jobs and won’t complain about a few cancer clusters now and then.
Please relax, it will be under control.
No relaxing when the environment is under attack.
They burn off all the VOC’s in northern Maine where there aren’t enough people who matter so they can burn cleaner fuel in the UK? Think about it! Maine gets the shaft ( again) .
Oh yeah, and a couple dozen hazardous, go nowhere jobs.
Hey dron, what do think about a National Park in that area? Do you think that would be a better idea?
It would create more then 30 jobs!!
The UK is no longer covered in forest. We are. Hence we have the resources for producing this product.
UK / europe don’t have very many bright leaders or people. so I wouldn’t put much into their global warming rants..
Denying global warming will not stop it.
Do you really think that you are alone ?
By capturing the VOC’s and burning them in the natural gas boiler renders these compounds inert. The steam will then be used to restart the Millinocket mill. Assuming this project will be a go, the homes in the area will be able to retrofit to natural gas boilers for home heat. Timber jobs/wood and paper jobs/not atmospheric VOC release/ lower cost home heating …. All sounds like a good proposition to me.
This will sail through the Penguin’s DEP – backroom deals were already made when Penguin bought the toxic dump and handed out the tax exemption gifts to lure the company into the area.
It will be interesting to see, 5-10 years down the line what the long term health effects of living next to an untested, industrial scale microwave oven, running 24/7 has on the locals.
Hey Bangor, ahhh forget it.
And this is why the safety and enviromental folk’s need to be given the leeway to do their job’s, without anyone constantly nitpicking them. This whole thing is so new that there are gonna be surprise’s. But seeing boogeymen even before the plant opens up is doing nothing but hurting everyone and causing a lot of heartburn that’s just not neccessary. Give these folk’s a chance to do thier job’s and then see where everything stand’s. Until then all that’s being made is smoke up the skirt. Given LePage’s crap recently, I’d say we’ve all had enough of that long enough !
If it is a business that employs people and it is located in the state of Maine then shut her down. This is a Libtard state….no work or compensation allowed. Go get your welfare and bath salts and be happy being an Egg Plant.
Maine: the step child of the Northeast.
Maine: the third world country of New England.
Give us your hazardous, unhealthy low paying jobs. We’ll decimate what’s left our our forest and expose our citizens to toxic air and water so the UK can burn clean fuel.
droning;, the forest is our garden, its renewable and has treated us good for hundreds of years and will continue to do so…
The magnatron on that thing must be huge. Probably cook a whole moose in 30 seconds.
At the risk of being labeled a SOB by both side’s, it’s time that EVERYONE took a big step back and looked at this objectively. Are VOC’s nasty and dangerous ? Yes, and that question has been answered long before this palnt was even an idea in Cate St’s, much less the local community’s, head. But Lobbes is correct in his view that the whole plant is pretty much a closed loop system that takes these VOC’s and use’s them as an added fuel, feeding the plant’s boiler’s, Nothing’s been said, or indicated that I’ve seen, that says the natural gas and VOC’s aren’t compatible as a fuel source for the boiler’s burner’s. By the time that these VOC’s are burned, their concentration is gonna be way down. That’s where the scrubber’s come in. As far as the smell is concerned, please ! Do us all a favor and go down to the Lincoln mill’s and get a good healthy whiff of it early in the morning. If that’s as bad as it get’s then get over it. This smell is going to be present wherever wood is process into paper and that’s not a fact that anyone can make go away. Might it call for more scrubber’s, or better one’s than are installed right now ? Sure. But does that make the plant, or the process, something to be turned into some sort of ‘Bad Guy’ ? No and to do so is either someone not thinking clearly or, and this is equally as bad, is someone that is so clearly locked into their own opinion’s being ‘The Right One’ that they can’t see the tree thru the forest.
It’s time that the emotional nonsense of this was dialed back and everyone took a good long and objective look at this plant and see what contribution they can make toward making it both a success and a safer place to work at and be around for the community’s and the familes in the area. And that’s what the DEP needs to be looking at beyond the technical stuff. Is it a safe place to work ? Is it gonna be damaging to the local environemnt ? Is it gonna generate any waste that is beyond either the plant’s or the local community’s abiltiy to safely handle and process ? That’s what the DEP ‘look-see’ is all about. Me personally, I’d be wondering where the DOL’s Safety folk’s are in all of this, not to mention the DOT folk’s, since the plant is gonna put a big strain on the local road’s as the plant is bulit and expand’s (And if Cate St is any kind of responsible business then they should be looking at expansion even now). Provided Cate St has done their homework and thought this whole plant and process through, then the whole plant should be a huge success. But, and this is a huge BUT, Cate St need’s now, before this DEP Review gets started, to have someone in their organization start asking those nasty ‘Devil’s Advocate’ question’s and get them answered before one of those ‘question’s’ comes up and bites someone in the butt, or worse. If that means that they have to re-work part of their plan or facility, then fine. Do it now before it costs everybody a big ‘butt bite’ and stops whatever good possibilities can come out of this. Millinocket and the entire region has had enough of that with Paulie and Company recently, Maybe it’s about time to focus and work toward something that can move the region forward, instead of looking back to see what was.
Apologies to all for the spelling. I was struggling with the 1st cup of coffee :}
Loyalists (capitalized L as considered a title) were North American colonists who remained
loyal subjects of the British crown during the American Revolutionary War.
They were often referred to as Tories , “Royalists or King’s Men”. Later after the war those Loyalists that did not
want to remain in the new USA and settled in what would become Canada were given the hereditary title of
United Empire Loyalists. Their colonial opponents, who supported the Revolution, were called Rebels,
Patriots or Whigs, but generally just thought of themselves as free Americans. Oh that’s a different story? Meanwhile in this never ending debate about what is more important jobs or the environment the answer has always been and will continue to be we have got to strike a balance. This balance was reached in the past. The Katahdin area had the best per capita income of any place east of the Mississippi. Jobs were abundant. New churches, new hospitals, new roads and schools. The workers of the region were able to reap the benefits of living in an area abundant with natural resources. The balance has been on tilt now for many years. The air is cleaner, the rivers are cleaner, the invested dollars are gone. Now is the time to consider what is of value? The last 25 years the people of Katahdin have been made a lot of empty promishes. The natural resources are here. We need to recognize the value of these resource. If we are to become a working forest again we must insist (mandate) that the wealth of this area be shared with the common people.
So you are advocating for socialism? Sounds good to me.
put whatever labels you want on it. Generally I call it frre americans
When you burn wood in a stove or furnace, one of the first things that happens is the wood
dries due to the furnace heat, and the resultant water vapor is released. Next, volatile organic compounds that include carbon, hydrogen, etc. vaporize due to the heat in the combustion chamber (through a process called “pyrolysis”) releasing these combustible compounds into the furnace gases. Additional combustion air is then consumed as these materials are completely burned to carbon dioxide and water vapor releasing additional heat energy. Through this process, the remaining solid material is, thereby, transformed into chemically reduced carbon (charcoal and whatever inorganic material…ash…is present). If additional oxygen (air) is provided, this charcoal will also burn releasing its thermal energy and forming carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This overall process is called “staged combustion”, as it occurs in a distinct stepwise fashion. I would guess that the microwave feature is designed to help remove the water vapor in the first step of this process.
While in their unoxidized (unburned) state, VOCs would have adverse environmental/health impacts, just like your neighbor’s inefficiently operated outdoor wood boiler. But, burn these materials to completion and you convert chemical energy into thermal energy and release combustion byproducts that are considered to be environmentally carbon neutral.
I suspect the UK’s interest in this buying this product has a lot to do with their lack of raw materials. They’ve probably got only about 3 trees left over there, so the local long-term viability of this technology would be questionable.
This is a very exciting new market for the Millinocket Mill, and one that I hope continues far into the future.
Thank you Cate Street